People's negative reactions to Emilia
When people react negatively to Emilia for being a white-haired female half-elf, the story seems to portray this as just prejudice. However, given what we're shown of the Ordeal that Petelgeuse puts on, it would seem that whenever there's a white-haired female half-elf that the Witch Cult will eventually show up and slaughter everyone around her. If that *is* the case then it would be rational to want to stay away from Emilia and be afraid when she shows up. And since people wouldn't know *why* the Witch keeps doing that, it wouldn't be entirely irrational to hold some suspicion of any white-haired female half-elf you meet.
Subaru's Immediate Need to Die
Subaru surviving is part of his characterization of 'being too scared to go down,' but if Return By Death is so fickle, why doesn't he carry a means of committing suicide around so that he doesn't have to suffer as much? He could very easily just ask someone like Roswaal for some poison or an instant-death amulet so that he doesn't have to manually kill himself or wait out through the torture just to activate Return By Death. Medieval poisons that work fast and painlessly enough exist, and Roswaal put a curse ON HIMSELF that can destroy someone's body and soul, so just the body or non-destructive instant death is not too farfetched. It's especially relevant in the 'waiting' case because some of his loops have involved some waiting in an isolated room for either some schmuck to slit his throat or for starvation/dehydration to take him. In some other cases, he also gets impatient and tries to bash his own head in or something because he doesn't have a convenient way on-hand to end it all. This would also go in line with what
Satella said about Subaru taking care of himself so other people in his life will have something left of him to love; putting himself through the pain instead of out of his own misery to sidestep it goes against that. This is accounting for in-universe logic, not for the annoying community answer of 'the writer shouldn't have to explain or resort to that.' Practically speaking, it makes the plothole of "Why does some of the
Torture Porn need to happen?" even more visible.
- "Subaru is too scared to die, so why doesn't he kill himself more often". Setting aside the question's inherently flawed premise, the reason he doesn't kill himself more often is because dying sucks. Subaru's repeated deaths frequently take a noted toll on his mental state and it's a miracle he's as sane as he is. And just from having seen the anime, nine times out of ten Subaru does everything in his power to succeed without having to sacrifice anything, least of all his own life. He doesn't throw his life away on "practice loops". Taking care of himself so other people in his life will have something left of him to love means doing what you can to succeed, not slitting your own throat at the first opportunity because Death Is Cheap.
- It's not a flawed question if you read it correctly... The question was: in case those times come up where Subaru officially decides "Yup, this is officially worth dying over, time to kill myself", why isn't he carrying a vial of paralytic poison to make slipping into death a painless experience? There's not always going to be a convenient cliff or discarded broken knife to kill himself with. If the actual dying part actually had a toll, which it most likely doesn't, given how the author writes the thousands of deaths in his 'IF' stories, it would be understandable that Subaru wouldn't want to come into a respawn point drooling and always about to fall over. But then you have those imprisonment and torture scenes where he just wishes he could die and you know YOU'D have the foresight to carry poison in case things got super dire if you were in his shoes. Think of all the times he died painfully or committed suicide. Don't you think that would be a lot less unpleasant if Subaru had total circumstantial control over how he died and how much of it he felt? I know I do. This has nothing to do with killing himself more often. It's about making the few deaths that actually occur or he wants to occur by his own hand being less torture-porny. And if you say "Return By Death takes a mental toll", I won't believe you and chalk up the actual toll to be a result of the death itself being a painful waking nightmare.
- To try and make sense of everything…well, this might be conjecture, but I suspect Satella might be behind that early on. Under her madness, she vocally emphasized that she wanted Subaru to love himself and not treat his life in a callous manner. So, I suspect she’s subconsciously pushing Subaru from considering such things (she’s not very rational, as Subaru points out). After Arc 4, Subaru is aligned with Roswaal, but the latter outright tells Subaru he’s going to be watching him and will take action if he believes Subaru can’t provide him with what he wants. Requesting a vial of suicide potion or activation suicide curse would be a lot more difficult to procure without Roswaal getting suspicious. Doubly so since Subaru can’t explain WHY he needs it. One could also argue that Rb D would mess with most forms of painless death Subaru could try. He was still aware of the Rabbits eating him alive up until one cracked open his skull and ate his brain; he should have gone into shock far before that happened going by the…graphic description. Could be Subaru is paranoid that the poison might incapacitate him and NOT kill him…
